The original design for this shawl was by the Iraqi House of Fashion. And then women started to copy the design at home. I bought a piece of woolen cloth at the market and gave it to a seamstress who used to live in the White Palace area of Baghdad (an area where the intelligence services headquarters were located). This seamstress had a machine which could print Arabic letters. She made me 4 shawls and I sent them to my daughters who had already left Iraq.

NAHIDHA MOHAMMED, born 1932 left 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait